Pentecost

Pentecost 1997

Sermon given at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church Brentwood

By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

John 20:19-23

Acts 2: 1-11

         Come Holy Spirit, come, come like the fire and burn, come like the wind and blow. Take our eyes and see through them, take our ears and hear through them, take our mouths and speak through them, take our hearts and set them afire.

         Have you ever had to write something, maybe a paper for school or a report for work, and you just sit there in front of the paper, empty, tried, thinking you’ll never get that done, and all of a sudden, a thought enters your mind, seemingly out of nowhere, and soon you are off and writing, feeling energized, creative again.

         Or perhaps you have sat at a meeting where all you wanted to do was go to sleep. You know the feeling, bored, drowsy, the meeting is going nowhere and you have a hard time concentrating. And you can tell that the others around you feel the same way, even if they are suppressing their yawns. When, suddenly, someone comes up with a comment or idea that seems to set the place alive. Suddenly the tiredness is gone and the ideas begin flying. What seemed like a waste of time that you would do anything to leave, is now the place you most want to be.

         We’ve all known those flashes, those breakthrough of illumination, where suddenly the energy is there to make a difference. Sometimes we refer to it as inspiration - to be in the spirit - to breath in.

         Today, on Pentecost, we celebrate the Holy Spirit, the third person of the trinity. Today is also considered the birthday of the church. Before my sermon I invoked the presence of the Holy Spirit. At the baptism today we will ask for the Holy Spirit to come upon the child Jacob Rhys Cropper. But what are we talking about when we refer to the Holy Spirit?

         When I was growing up the third person of the trinity was referred to as the Holy Ghost. In my child’s mind I imaged it to looks something like Casper the friendly ghost. It was a white, see through kind of thing. But that is not at all how the Holy Spirit shows itself in the Bible. 

         One image is of a dove, and we can see that dove represented on the back window, that descended upon Jesus when he was baptized. The other images are presented in the readings today. At Pentecost the Holy Spirit comes as wind and fire. It is also represented as breath in the Gospel as Jesus breathes upon the disciples. Breath, fire, wind, a dove. These are the images. But what do they represent. At first look they are very comforting, the gentle dove, the fire that warms us when we are cold, the gentle breeze that cools us, the breath of Christ. Who wouldn’t want the spirit to be present, to give us support and peace.

         But there is one thing we need to remember about the Holy Spirit - it is not domesticated. The Spirit blows where it wills. It can be a gentle breeze that fills us with comfort, or a tornado that turns our life upside down. - Just ask Dorothy when she finds herself transported from the gray of Kansas to the vivid colors of Oz. The Spirit can be a warming fire, and it can rage and burn bright and hard like the fire that purifies metal, burning away all our impurities. And if you have ever felt yourself in the refiner’s fire you know how uncomfortable that can be. 

         And even the image of that gentle dove is deceptive. After Christ’s baptism, we are told that the spirit drove him into the desert for 40 days of fasting and temptations. I’m not sure I’d want that kind of gentleness. 

         And finally we have the image of Jesus breathing onto the disciples. He tells them “receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” What a powerful, daring, incredible responsibility, and awesome power.

         The Holy Spirit is sometimes described as God’s action in the world. So what is this action like. First of all, when the Holy Spirit comes into our lives everything is turned upside down, everything is changed. We are no longer the same person we were before the spirit enters our life. Dorothy is a wonderful image for this. Her old life was destroyed by the tornado. She finds herself in a whole new world, a world full of wonder, and fear, and temptation, and hope. When we ask for the presence of the spirit, we need to be ready to be transformed.

         Next we find that the action of the spirit is the beginning of a process, of a journey. Christ goes to the wilderness, the disciples go out of the room they are hiding in and begin to preach. 

         When Dorothy finds herself in Oz she begins a journey, a journey that transforms her. She goes from being a weak and frightened girl, into the leader of a group of travelers who has the courage to confront the false wizard and demand gifts for her friends. And she also develops the wisdom to realized that she has, and always has had, the power to go where she most wants to be, to go home.

         The spirit transforms, purifies and empowers - empowered to do what God calls us to do. Christ is empowered to follow his call to teach, and heal, and sacrifice himself. The disciples are empowered to forgive, to preach and to teach the good news. 

         The Holy Spirit is God acting in the world, and when it comes upon us, it is to prepare and empower us to act. One must be very careful what one asks for.

         After my brain surgery, and the difficulties I went through for the first year, I was so grateful to be alive, to be enjoying my family, to be able to think and act, that I prayed in thanksgiving, “How can I serve?” I prayed this almost every day for several years, not having any idea what the answer to this prayer would be. Suddenly one day I felt the Spirit upon me, and felt I had received the answer to my prayer - I was to become a priest. It was something I had never even imagined. And it was the beginning of one of the most difficult and rewarding journeys of my life. I knew what I felt called to, but getting their involved dealing with the diocese, going to seminary, confronting many inner doubts and fears, learning things about myself that I would just as well have ignored. It was years of burning, purification, tempering of the instrument (and it still goes on), for a purpose. So I could be empowered. So I could act.

         Every experience of the Holy Spirit in the Bible is associated with empowerment, empowerment to action. When we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit we are called to action. Those of us who are baptized had the Holy Spirit invoked in our lives. Those of us who feel touched by the spirit of God’s love have been touched by the spirit and are empowered to act, to make a difference, to tell others, to be God’s instruments on earth.

         The Holy Spirit is far from domesticated. It can and will turn your life upside down, sending you to places you have never imagined, testing refining and purifying you, and most importantly, empowering you. Empowering you to make a difference in the world. 

         Come Holy Spirit, come, come like the fire and burn, come like the wind and blow. Take our eyes and see through them, take our ears and hear through them, take our mouths and speak through them, take our hearts and set them afire.

Pentecost Sermon

On Pentecost we invite the Holy Spirit to be among us. Yet, we never know what the Spirit will bring, peace and comfort or power and transformation. Perhaps we need to be careful what we ask for.

Pentecost 1997

Sermon given at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church Brentwood

By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

John 20:19-23

Acts 2: 1-11

         Come Holy Spirit, come, come like the fire and burn, come like the wind and blow. Take our eyes and see through them, take our ears and hear through them, take our mouths and speak through them, take our hearts and set them afire.

         Have you ever had to write something, maybe a paper for school or a report for work, and you just sit there in front of the paper, empty, tried, thinking you’ll never get that done, and all of a sudden, a thought enters your mind, seemingly out of nowhere, and soon you are off and writing, feeling energized, creative again.

         Or perhaps you have sat at a meeting where all you wanted to do was go to sleep. You know the feeling, bored, drowsy, the meeting is going nowhere and you have a hard time concentrating. And you can tell that the others around you feel the same way, even if they are suppressing their yawns. When, suddenly, someone comes up with a comment or idea that seems to set the place alive. Suddenly the tiredness is gone and the ideas begin flying. What seemed like a waste of time that you would do anything to leave, is now the place you most want to be.

         We’ve all known those flashes, those breakthrough of illumination, where suddenly the energy is there to make a difference. Sometimes we refer to it as inspiration - to be in the spirit - to breath in.

         Today, on Pentecost, we celebrate the Holy Spirit, the third person of the trinity. Today is also considered the birthday of the church. Before my sermon I invoked the presence of the Holy Spirit. At the baptism today we will ask for the Holy Spirit to come upon the child Jacob Rhys Cropper. But what are we talking about when we refer to the Holy Spirit?

         When I was growing up the third person of the trinity was referred to as the Holy Ghost. In my child’s mind I imaged it to looks something like Casper the friendly ghost. It was a white, see through kind of thing. But that is not at all how the Holy Spirit shows itself in the Bible.

         One image is of a dove, and we can see that dove represented on the back window, that descended upon Jesus when he was baptized. The other images are presented in the readings today. At Pentecost the Holy Spirit comes as wind and fire. It is also represented as breath in the Gospel as Jesus breathes upon the disciples. Breath, fire, wind, a dove. These are the images. But what do they represent. At first look they are very comforting, the gentle dove, the fire that warms us when we are cold, the gentle breeze that cools us, the breath of Christ. Who wouldn’t want the spirit to be present, to give us support and peace.

         But there is one thing we need to remember about the Holy Spirit - it is not domesticated. The Spirit blows where it wills. It can be a gentle breeze that fills us with comfort, or a tornado that turns our life upside down. - Just ask Dorothy when she finds herself transported from the gray of Kansas to the vivid colors of Oz. The Spirit can be a warming fire, and it can rage and burn bright and hard like the fire that purifies metal, burning away all our impurities. And if you have ever felt yourself in the refiner’s fire you know how uncomfortable that can be.

         And even the image of that gentle dove is deceptive. After Christ’s baptism, we are told that the spirit drove him into the desert for 40 days of fasting and temptations. I’m not sure I’d want that kind of gentleness.

         And finally we have the image of Jesus breathing onto the disciples. He tells them “receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” What a powerful, daring, incredible responsibility, and awesome power.

         The Holy Spirit is sometimes described as God’s action in the world. So what is this action like. First of all, when the Holy Spirit comes into our lives everything is turned upside down, everything is changed. We are no longer the same person we were before the spirit enters our life. Dorothy is a wonderful image for this. Her old life was destroyed by the tornado. She finds herself in a whole new world, a world full of wonder, and fear, and temptation, and hope. When we ask for the presence of the spirit, be ready to be transformed.

         Next we find that the action of the spirit is the beginning of a process, of a journey. Christ goes to the wilderness, the disciples go out of the room they are hiding in and begin to preach.

         When Dorothy finds herself in Oz she begins a journey, a journey that transforms her. She goes from being a weak and frightened girl, into the leader of a group of travelers who has the courage to confront the false wizard and demand gifts for her friends. And she also develops the wisdom to realized that she has, and always has had, the power to go where she most wants to be, to go home.

         The spirit transforms, purifies and empowers. Empowered to do what God calls us to do. Christ is empowered to follow his call to teach, and heal, and sacrifice himself. The disciples are empowered to forgive, to preach and to teach the good news.

         The Holy Spirit is God acting in the world, and when it comes upon us, it is to prepare and empower us to act. One must be very careful what one asks for.

         After my brain surgery, and the difficulties I went through for the first year, I was so grateful to be alive, to be enjoying my family, to be able to think and act, that I prayed in thanksgiving, “How can I serve?” I prayed this almost every day for several years, not having any idea what the answer to this prayer would be. Suddenly one day I felt the Spirit upon me, and felt I had received the answer to my prayer - I was to become a priest - it was something I had never even imagined. And it was the beginning of one of the most difficult and rewarding journeys of my life. I knew what I felt called to, but getting their involved dealing with the diocese, going to seminary, confronting many inner doubts and fears, learning things about myself that I would just as well have ignored. It was years of burning, purification, tempering of the instrument (and it still goes on), for a purpose. So I could be empowered. So I could act.

         Every experience of the Holy Spirit in the Bible is associated with empowerment, empowerment to action. When we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit we are called to action. Those of us who are baptized had the Holy Spirit invoked in our lives. Those of us who feel touched by the spirit of God’s love, have been touched by the spirit and are empowered to act, to make a difference, to tell others, to be God’s instruments on earth.

         The Holy Spirit is far from domesticated. It can and will turn your life upside down, sending you to place you have never imagined, testing refining and purifying you, and most importantly, empowering you. Empowering you to make a difference in the world.

         Come Holy Spirit, come, come like the fire and burn, come like the wind and blow. Take our eyes and see through them, take our ears and hear through them, take our mouths and speak through them, take our hearts and set them afire.

Pentecost Sermon

Pentecost is one of my favorite Feast Days. I love honoring the power of the Holy Spirit. Here is a sermon I gave in 2011. It included some reflections on a Pentecost Eve several years before when I watched a wild fire growing closer to my home.

Pentecost

Transcribed from a sermon given

June 12, 2011

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

The Rev. Valerie Hart

Pentecost - the coming of the Holy Spirit. I love Pentecost. I love the energy of the Holy Spirit, and the presence, and the power and the surprise. Because one thing about the Holy Spirit is that it tends to surprise us. It is not domesticated. The Holy Spirit does what it will and transforms what it will. The images for Pentecost - fire, wind, breath, red hanging down from the ceiling, flames coming out of people’s heads. All these wonderful, wonderful images of strength and power.

When I was a kid the Holy Spirit was always called the Holy Ghost as it was in the first song that we sang. I know I’m dating myself saying that, but as a little kid my image of the Holy Ghost was Casper the friendly ghost. Anybody remember Casper the friendly ghost? You know the Holy Spirit was sort of this friendly warm fuzzy thing. Well, it can be. The Holy Spirit can be comforting; it can be a breath that heals. Just like on a hot day, a breath of cool wind can be refreshing and healing, or on a cold night a fire can be warming and feel really good.

But if you have been watching the news at all lately, you know that wind and fire are not always comfortable. We’ve had horrible tornados in the middle of this country, where the wind comes into a town and it swirls around and knocks down everything, picks it all up, mixes it all together and throws it all out. And right now there is a fire going on in Arizona that has covered hundreds of square miles burning everything in its path.

Wind and fire. I remember one Pentecost Eve on a Saturday night where I lived in Brentwood East of San Francisco. We lived out in the country on a hill and we noticed early in the evening, looking off of our back patio that there was some smoke in the hills. And then we noticed that the smoke appeared to be getting larger and coming closer. And then we heard and saw the airplanes going over dropping water just behind the last hill. And then we started seeing flames and it started to get a little nerve wracking. And then the sheriff came and knocked on the door and said: “You don’t have to evacuate yet, it’s still on the other side of the road, but you should be ready to evacuate.” I thought, “Wow, this is a Pentecost.” Wind was blowing; it was hot, now this was Pentecost.

When you know you might have to evacuate you find yourself in a very interesting position.  It makes you take stock of what’s really important. The first thing is that we would have to figure out how to get the dogs and cats all in one car. That would be the first thing, the animals. But after that, what do you take with you? Some pictures? The computer? Some important papers? Some things your children made? What do you take? What’s really important? And the more we thought about it we realized that all that was really important was the dogs and the cats and that everybody got out alive because all the rest was just stuff.

Well, fortunately, the fire stayed on the other side of the road and we didn’t have to evacuate. But it made me rethink things. What are the priorities? What’s really important? The next day we got up and the hillside was all charred and black. If you have seen hillsides where there has been a fire, you know and it is not a pretty sight. Everything was destroyed and burned. And hillside looked like that all summer long, reminding us of the power of the fire. And then the rains came. And in the part that was burned the green came up really fast. Because all the left over from the year before was gone. All the weeds, all the stubble was gone and all you saw was the green shoots. Then as spring came the wild flowers were extraordinary. I’ve never seen wildflowers the way they were on that burned hillside. Everything that would interfere with the wildflowers growing had been burned away and the ash was a great fertilizer. It was the most beautiful hillside I’d ever seen.

Wind and fire can be destructive, can be disorienting. The Holy Spirit can be like that sometimes too. The Holy Spirit can come upon you all of a sudden. Everything gets turned around. It is like a tornado, everything that you thought was true gets confused. You don’t know which way to go; you don’t know what’s important. Everything is up in the air because you are being transformed. Of course the Holy Spirit sometimes comes upon you when you need comfort; and when you need comfort it is soothing and helpful. But other times you need purification, other times the Holy Spirit comes upon us and burns, burns away the dross, burns away the stuff left over from our past. Burns away the guilt we still hold onto, burns away the anger we have at others. Burns away memories we may not even know we have. And sometimes that can be hard, and that can be painful. But that’s God’s love.

If you have ever been in love, whether it be with a spouse, or a grandchild, or with Christ, if you have ever been in love and you have felt that passion of love you know at times it burns. It burns good, but it burns. When you are not with the person, it hurts, when you are with the person there is a flame. Everything gets shifted and changed. Nothing looks the same. Colors are not the same. When you read a love poem, suddenly it is “Ah, that’s what this is about!” that you never understood before. Everything has changed.

When the love of God comes upon us as the Holy Spirit everything is changed. Our ears are open to hear in a new way. Have you ever been reading scripture or listening to scripture in church and it might be a passage that you’ve heard many times before, but all of a sudden a word or a phrase just jumps out at you. It’s like if you are reading it on the page it’s in bold and it just stands out and suddenly you understand it in a way you never understood it before. That’s the action of the Holy Spirit. Opening our hearts and minds to hear.

The Holy Spirit came upon the disciples for one purpose - to empower them to be sent out. To empower them to be instruments of God’s love. To empower them to go into the world and say ‘God loves you. God came as Christ. God wants us all to know that He is with us.’ To empower them to tell that good news, to share it in whatever way they could. And it comes to us for the same reason, to empower us to be instruments of God’s love. 

In order to do that we have to be free of things about us that get in the way. If you are kind of shy and you don’t like to talk people, well maybe that’s going to get burned up so you can talk. Or maybe the gift you have is a gift as an artist, but when you were in fifth grade the art teacher said, you don’t have any talent and you made the mistake of believing that. The Holy Spirit needs to come in and say ‘nope, they were wrong. You are an artist.’  There’s that wonderful passage from Corinthians that talks about that we all have gifts and they are all different and they are all empowered by the Holy Spirit. And these gifts are there for one purpose, to strengthen the body of Christ. To empower us to be sent out into the world as Christ was sent into the world. That’s the power of love - to transform us and empower us.

When we gather today we invoke the Holy Spirit.  When you in you life finally say, ‘Okay God, whatever,” God just might take you up on it. And it will be amazing. Maybe it will feel like fire or like a tornado has gone through your life, but it will empower you and strengthen you to be the instrument of love that God intends for you to be.